Sunday

Dec 18, 2016 at 10:38 AM

House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs took the unconventional step during the Kansas Democratic Party convention in Topeka of publicly identifying 15 Republican House members considered most vulnerable to defeat in the 2016 election cycle.

The veteran lawmaker representing the Democratic stronghold in Kansas City, Kan., said during the April gathering limited resources would require emphasis on nine conservative GOP incumbents with ties to Gov. Sam Brownback or serving districts in which Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Davis did well in 2014. If the six others stumbled at the ballot box, he said, all the better.

"I caught flack for making the announcement," said Burroughs, chastised by colleagues for tipping his hand to Republicans who might parlay the information into extra contributions or endorsements. "We had a pretty good idea what legislators were vulnerable. We were able to field very qualified candidates."

After the November general election, 11 of the 15 put on notice by Burroughs had been vanquished. Democrats won all nine A-list districts on Burroughs’ radar, including the 56th District held by Rep. Lane Hemsley of Topeka. Rep. Ken Corbet, a Topeka Republican among secondary targets, eluded grasp of opposition exploiting anti-Brownback sentiment. Overall, challengers secured 73 percent of the 15 seats.

The Kansas Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee, which possessed an enviable record of leveraging campaigns for GOP conservatives in 2010 and 2012, slumped to mediocrity in 2016. The Chamber PAC’s influence in legislative politics showed signs of weakening in 2014, the year Brownback narrowly won re-election.

In 2016, evolving voter concern with decisions by Brownback and Republican lawmakers to enact aggressive state income tax reductions and to repeatedly adopt budgets that fell out of compliance with revenue targets meant only 44 of 84 candidates endorsed by the Chamber PAC were elected or re-elected to the Legislature. The Chamber PAC’s success rate this year was 52 percent.

House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey, a Louisburg Republican endorsed by the Chamber PAC, said his door-to-door campaigning affirmed the electorate’s anxiety with management of state government by a Republican governor and GOP legislative leaders, including himself, that had benefit the past four years of commanding majorities in both the House and Senate.

"I had to work very hard in my race in a district that shouldn’t have to be that difficult for an incumbent," Vickrey said.

Republicans remain a partisan majority in the House and Senate, but advances by moderate Republicans and Democrats already changed Statehouse dynamics. Moderate Republicans have been selected to assume powerful leadership posts when the 2017 session opens in January. Depending on the issue, Democrats and moderate Republicans will be able to create a voting majority in both chambers.

Rebecca McCormack, vice president of political affairs with the Kansas Chamber, said after the Nov. 8 election that incumbents losing races in 2016 were "perceived to be less conservative than advertised as they had voted to raise taxes and had failed to bring spending in line with revenues."

However, Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said the analysis shared by McCormack ignored voters’ rejection of dozens of Chamber-sponsored candidates.

"The Kansas Chamber so clearly aligned themselves as the chief cheerleader for Sam Brownback’s tax cuts and lobbied hard to see they all stayed in place," Kelly said.

She said the Chamber PAC’s performance on Election Day contributed to the resignation one month later of Mike O’Neal, the president of the Kansas Chamber. O’Neal was still House speaker when bulk of the controversial tax reforms were adopted in 2012.

Rep. Don Hineman, a Republican from Dighton chosen by peers to be the new House majority leader, said the 2016 elections demonstrated Kansans were eager to see what could be accomplished by a Legislature populated by more pragmatic centrists. Losses by conservative GOP members of the House and Senate prove the point, he said.

"Not a single moderate Republican lost," Hineman said. "That tells me it wasn’t a universal repudiation of the Republican brand."

Political organizations operating as rivals to the Chamber PAC had better endorsement results. Sixty-eight percent of candidates embraced by the Kansas-National Education Association PAC prevailed. The figure didn’t include races in which the K-12 education political action committee supported both the Republican and Democratic nominee in a legislative district.

Economic Lifelines, which advocates for state investment in highway infrastructure, watched as 79 percent of its preferred candidates were elected. MainStream Coalition’s PAC, which concentrated on campaigns within Johnson, Wyandotte and Douglas counties, had 62 percent of those endorsed win.

Rep. Melissa Rooker, R-Fairway, said messages to voters from KNEA, Economic Lifelines, MainStream Coalition and other organizations were consistent and persistent.

She said voters showed they wouldn’t be "conned" by distorted campaign mailers from the Kansas Chamber and other conservative groups. Kansans are searching for politicians prepared to deliver on tax equity and to responsibly approach funding of public education, transportation and social services, she said.

"The message was pretty consistent across all those groups — tax and budget are the drivers of everything else," Rooker said. "Kansas is a very pragmatic place. Center-right is probably our lane."

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